Social Networking Sites, Privacy, and Security

Ronald E. Leenes, Tilburg University Law School, has published Context is Everything - Sociality and Privacy in Online Social Network Sites, in Privacy and Identity (A.M. Bezzi, ed. IFIP AICT 320, 2010) at pp. 48-65. Here is the abstract.

Social Network Sites (SNSs) pose many privacy issues. Apart from the fact that privacy in an online social network site may sound like an oxymo- ron, significant privacy issues are caused by the way social structures are currently handled in SNSs. Conceptually different social groups are generally conflated into the singular notion of ‘friend’. This chapter argues that attention should be paid to the social dynamics of SNSs and the way people handle social contexts. It shows that SNS technology can be designed to support audience segregation, which should mitigate at least some of the privacy issues in Social Network Sites.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.